Ça marche! Some simple steps for a better travel experience

My latest addiction is a welcome one that's both healthy and helpful when you're on your own and exploring the world

I’ve picked up a new addiction since hitting the road in September. This can be a little worrying, since my past dependencies have proven hard to shake (and quite expensive): cigarettes and alcohol. I was a heavy smoker from the age of 16 to about 41 and a problem drinker for about 13 years more. But this latest addiction isn’t hard on my liver or my lungs, instead it’s eating at my sole.

Well, both soles.

For 50 of the last 66 days, I’ve walked at least 10,000 steps, anywhere from 7.5 to 18 km. I only know this, of course, because someone has planted a tracking device on me. I don’t know where they hid it, but I found a way to use my iPhone to intercept the data. So naturally, I keep my phone close to me at all times, to monitor what the people tracking me are seeing.

En tous cas, as we say here in France, ça marche bien. There have only been four days where I walked fewer than 5,000 steps, two where I was too sick to venture outside (0 and 32 steps!), one where I spent most of the day on a bus (even in France, they look at you weird if you pace back and forth in a bus aisle) and one where I was mourning my cats Penny and Demi, who had died in a fire two days earlier. I spent most of that day writing a tribute to their lives.

In truth, I likely wouldn’t have got hooked on the walking if my iPhone didn’t keep telling me how many (or how few) steps I take in a given day. Ignorance is bliss, they say; which is why they is overweight. But knowledge is apparently power (walking), so now I find myself on occasion circling the block three times at 23h30 just to get the step-ticker to flip past 10,000 so I can go to bloody sleep.

But I haven’t been losing any sleep over over this, au contraire. Turn out that tiring yourself out is good for getting to sleep quickly. No, the only thing I’ve been losing is weight. I can’t tell you how much because it has been three weeks since I saw a scale, but the last I checked I was the lightest I’ve been in 20 years. And I’ve added more than 363,000 steps since then, the equivalent of walking from Montréal to Québec City, or Toulouse to Barcelona.

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Okay, we all know walking is good for you. It is a low-impact, moderate-intensity, aerobic physical activity that’s good for the glutes and the heart and it can be done for free practically anywhere. (But not on a bus, we went over that.)

I have also discovered some other amazing benefits from setting a 10,000-step goal while travelling.

1- It gets you off your butt on days where you’re tempted to hibernate. Walking at a moderate pace, it should take you 90 minutes, more or less, to do the steps. Do it all at once or in intervals, whatever works for you or your schedule. When the weather is shite, find an indoor activity, whether it’s going to a shopping mall or spending a half-day in a museum. (I did about 13,000 steps just at the Louvre.)

Figuring out the next 10,000 steps can give your day a kick-start.

2- It inspires you to find new places to explore. If you’ve already walked around the central city, you might look at exploring some of the unique neighbourhoods that may be a little off the beaten track. Just when you think you know the place, boom, you discover one of the micro-climates that provide a whole new perspective. Every city has them; setting different walking itineraries every day will give you a broader appreciation of what’s on offer.

3- You will stumble on things that most visitors will miss. Whether it’s an obscure historic building, a great hyper-local restaurant or café, or even an intriguing hole in the ground, a random walk lets you make all kinds of interesting discoveries. Because your eyes are focussed on the journey rather than the destination, you will see new things and literally take unexpected turns.

Those are just some of the other reasons why I do so much walking when I first get to a new city or neighbourhood. I get a better sense of the geography, of the people, of the character peculiar to every community. The more familiar it feels, the easier it is to become comfortable, to feel like you may be starting to fit in. On yesterday’s walk in Toulouse, I had a couple asking me directions, and I answered an elderly woman’s question about how much a bus ticket costs. It gives me a kick to give them the right answer rather than a lame “I’m not from here” response.

I also discovered another cathedral and a basilica (I thought I’d seen them all), a local police precinct (to handle my visa validation), a new route to the Pont Neuf, I watched two kayakers zip down the Rivière Garonne, found a quiet tourist info place that loaded me up with brochures for neighbourhood walks, and ran across a fascinating hole in the ground where the city is building a new métro station, right where an important monument stood just three months ago.

I say “stood,” because they moved the whole freaking thing. Over 1000 tonnes, they lifted it in one piece onto a huge motorized platform, swung it 90° so they could avoid harming massive plane trees that line the square, then rolled it at 0.5 km/hr for 30 metres on a trailer with a hundred tires to a position where it would be lowered again, safe from harm during the excavation of the future métro line and station.

When the station’s done, they’ll repeat the operation and move it back.

(You can see the whole operation illustrated here or watch the actual move in fast-action here:

I wouldn’t have known any of that if I hadn’t taken that walk yesterday. I know that moving monuments may seem unimportant when your only concern as a tourist is taking a selfie with the Mona Lisa, but I love it when the places I visit whisper unique stories in my ear. To hear them, you have to get close tho. You can’t do that from the bus, even if they let you walk the aisle.

What’s the fuss? A day at the Louvre is good for the soles as I pounded out 13,000 steps while exploring two wings of the famed museum.

Thanks for taking this little stroll with me. I hope you made your own discoveries today.